Fabrics used as through air drying and transfer fabrics in a tissue making process are typically woven endless fabrics manufactured using a tubular weaving technique or seaming a flat woven fabric into an endless structure. In either method of manufacturing, the weaving process is an expensive, complex, labor-intensive process. Developing new weaving patterns and materials that deliver the desired characteristics of the fabric and the tissue product can require a large investment of time and money. Additionally, there are physical constraints on the patterns and height differentials that may be woven on a loom, and there are further constraints on the runnability of fabrics so manufactured.
The use of substrates other than woven fabrics in the formation or drying of paper is known to a limited degree, such as non-fibrous monoplanar films and membranes used in the production of tissue. In tissue making, these structures typically offer flat, planar, non-fibrous regions for imprinting a web during a compression step in order to provide a network of densified regions surrounding undensified regions, with the densified regions providing strength and the undensified regions providing softness and absorbency. Such structures and processes lack the contoured, non-planar three-dimensionality that may be useful in producing textured and noncompressively dried materials and lack the intrinsic porosity and other properties found in fibrous materials. Such processes also result in a sheet with regions of high density and regions of low density, which is not suitable for some products. Further, substantially planar films are inherently limited in their ability to impart three-dimensional structures to a sheet.
Therefore, there is a need for improved tissue making fabrics capable of overcoming one or more of the limitations of previously known materials.